Leakage and Scattered Radiation Dosage in Portable Dental X-rays

Abstract

Objective: The objective of this study is to investigate amount of leakage and scattered radiation affectingoperators during radiography by comparison of portable dental X-ray units with fixeddental X-ray units. Methods: Five kinds of the portable X-ray unit and three kinds of the fixed X-ray unit were tested for comparison. Aradiation Measurement Electrometer (Model no.9010 with Chamber 10*5-1800, Radical co, USA) was used to obtain a set of leakage radiationmeasurements by pointing the electrometer to each irradiating unitfrom left, right, above, and belowand a set of scattered radiation measurements reflected from a subject by pointing the electrometer to the subject. Results: Statistically, a significant difference in the average amount of leakage radiation was not observed between the portable and the fixed dental X-ray units (p＞0.05). Among the tested portable units, DIOX 602 showed the lowest scattered radiation dose while ADX3000, ANYRAY2, and PORT2 showed significantly higher scattered radiation dose. Significant difference in the average measurement from each unit was observed. Among the tested fixed units, ESX showed the lowest scattered radiation dose while Max-GLS and ESX showed significantly higher scattered radiation dose. Significant difference in the average measurement from each unit was observed. Statistically, a significant difference in the average amount of scattered radiation was observed between the portable and the fixed units (p＜0.05). Conclusion: The portable dental X-ray units showed averagely higher dose of scattered radiation than the fixed units therefore it is recommended to use the fixed dental X-ray unit.